HELLO FUTURE: Kevin Gets a Space Coach — Recruiting Kirby Runyon for the Civilian Spaceflight Journey

Speaker 1 (00:08):
By now, it's no secret that ever since I was
a kid, I wanted to go to outer space. In fact,
growing up outside of Philly in Delaware County, my friends
and I at Recess would have this game that we
called Party on Mars. I kid you not. The group
of elementary school kids of which I was a part of.
We would literally every single day on the blacktop of
Wallingford Elementary School play Party on Mars and basically transport
ourselves as if we were many Elon Musk's or Jeff
Bezos's or I don't know whatever other folks are going
to space Katy Perry's for all I know, and try
to go to outer space. And now we're living in
a world where that's actually a reality. But I know
that I can't get to outer space alone. I need
a space coach. I need a guide. I need someone
who's going to keep me on path so that over
the next couple of years, I can make sure that
I am manifesting my dream to go to outer space.
Hello Future, it's me keV. This is a dispatch from
the Digital Frontier. The planet is Earth. The year is
twenty twenty six. My name is Kevin SURREALI You can
get all of the latest Hello Future episodes on your
iHeartMedia app or by visiting Meetthefuture dot Substack dot com
or MTF Meet Future MTF dot TV. Today, I'm interviewing
someone who has agreed to be my space coach, Kirby Runyan. Now,
Kirby is a fascinating basologist, which isn't even a word,
but he studies the Solar System. He's like a geologist
of the Moon. He's mapping the Moon. He works with NASA.
He's a space expert scientist, and for some reason, he's
agreed to be my space coach. So, Kirby Coach, Kirby
Kirby Runyan, thank you so much for showing up to
Meet the Future. You train civilians to go to space.
How did you get into being a space Why have
you agreed to take me on? And what is it
exactly that you do for people like me who are
space enthusiasts but not as smart as you.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Hey, keV, thanks so much for having me. Great to
be with you. Yeah, so, I want to share the passion,
beauty and joy of space and the amazement, awe and
wonder that we have when we contemplate the Cosmos with
everyday people, just enthusiasts, not necessarily scientists, and I got
started in this field. Let me back up a little bit.
I've had a career as a planetary geologist. As you said,
I went to Johns Hopkins for my PhD in that field,
and I realized that space was inaccessible to everyday people.
At the same time, we've had companies like Blue Origin
and Virgin Galactic rise up in popularity, and we've had
companies like the Zero Gravity Corporation or just Zero g.
They fly this airplane that gives you twenty seconds at
a time of zero gravity. And I wanted to find
a way to bring other people along with me in
answering my lifelong question, what is it like in space?
It's not a hard question to ask, it's a very
hard question to answer and address, and it's really been
a lifelong pursuit. So you know, back in twenty twenty two,
keV I took a group of Virgin Galactic ticket holders.
These are Virgin Galactic calls, these future astronauts. These people
have a ticket they're going to space with Virgin Galactic
on their rocket powered suborbital space plane. And I took
them to the New Mexico Desert to show them up
close the landscapes, the views that they're going to have
over our planet. And this is the same philosophy actually
that NASA uses in training it's astronauts, even its International
Space Station astronauts get trained in geology because they're flying
over Earth and Earth is just a big ball of
geology in space. And so I called my philosophy from
space to in your face. Someone seeing the same thing
out the window from space can now also experience the
same thing up close and understand the same thing, whether
it's White Sand's National Park, whether it's the Carrizozola Flow,
whether it's other volcanoes from two completely different perspectives, and
so hopefully blow their mind as they contemplate size and
scale and location.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
So I think it's really fascinating, and you have a
very awesome ability from your research, from everything you put
out there of getting the science community to talk to
the non science community and the non science community to
talk to the science community. And especially when we were
doing the pre interview, we really connected just over Artemis
two in the splash down and so many people. My
phone was blowing up, And in fact, just the other
day I was in a space conference because I get
invited to them now, which is awesome, and thank you
for inviting me. All the people who are with NASA
and with Space Force, and there is such an awesome
energy right now in the community because of Artemis two.
And they're talking about every six months in the twenty
thirties to be able to send manned space missions to
the Moon. But just talk to me about for you personally,
what Artemis two represented from a perspective of why geology
is so important to space travel, because ultimately, when we
colonize the Moon, colonize Mars, colonize Europa, be able to
mine asteroids. Really we always talk about the energy it's
going to be needing to get there, but really it's
for geology to look at these rare not Earth, but
rare Solar System minerals to be able to make life
better for humans.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, Artemis two was a dream come true for me. Now,
I'm not directly involved with the mission at all. I
know people who are. I've met some of the astronauts
went to the Moon. But I've been speeding this day
my whole life. As a child of the Space Shuttle era.
I have been waiting with baited breath for humans to
get back to the Moon for the first time since
nineteen seventy two. For the first time in my life,
I got to experience humans not on but at least
around the Moon, and that was I felt exultant. I
felt deeply fulfilled existentially in getting to experience some of
my own species around the Moon. And I want to
touch on the geology bit. I don't want people's eyes
to glaze over when they hear that word. The point
is that the Moon is not just an idea. It's
a place. Mars is not just an idea. It's not
an abstract idea. It's a real place that things and
people can visit. And when I say geology, I just
mean something that's made out of rocks. The Moon is
made out of rocks, and so just like the Earth,
the Moon is a big ball of geology and space,
and so is Mars, and so is Europa.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
As you mentioned, I've got my eye on Europa. I
think we don't talk about Europa, and okay, I digress.
Keep going.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
There's a lot of enthusiasm for space, but I want
to as you kindly refer to me as as a bridge,
as a space bridge between experts and non experts. There's
a lot of enthusiasm for space, and in the enthusiast community,
there isn't a lot of not knowledge. There's an ancient
proverb that says, to your zeal add wisdom, or zeal
without knowledge is folly and shame. And part of my
self imposed job description is to help bring a lot
of knowledge to the people who are zealous. But also
on the flip side, a lot of my colleagues in
planetary science and exploration have knowledge, but sometimes they're really
lacking in zeal. So I'm trying to also bring that
passion and excitement back into the professional space community that
sometimes people get jaded and they take it for granted that, oh,
my goodness, we are becoming a space faring civilization and
they've failed, and I want people to not fail to
fully grasp the enormity of that.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
All right, So Kirby Runyan is my guest today. He
is a planetary geologist and research scientists at the Planetary
Science Institute, which is a very important organization. But he's
worked with NASA. He's had studies that have been backed
by NASA. Really smart guy. According to one of your bios.
You're also the project science for the Neptune Odyssey Concept study,
which is studying Neptune's moon, Triton. So I'm a Europa fan.
Why should I become a Triton fan?

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Okay, if you're a Europa fan, hopefully you're also a
Pluto fan.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
You know, Oh yeah, we're going to talk about Pluto.
R Right.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Triton is the only large moon of Neptune. But the
reason I bring up Pluto is because Triton and Pluto
kind of started off as kind of sister planets or
sister dwarf planets, and Triton's a little bit bigger. But
the weird thing is that Triton used to be its
own planet, orbiting the Sun until Neptune's gravity came along
and swept it into orbit around Neptune, becoming.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
What we call that a dysfunctional relationship. Triton needs to
break free and go back around the Sun.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Triton has a subsurface liquid water ocean. We think, like Europa,
it's got similar type of these they're called double ridges,
these spreading sensors. They're sort of like the boundaries of
tectonic plates like on Earth. We think maybe kind of
sort of. Triton also has these sooty volcanoes or are
they geysers speeling out near the south pole. There are
nitrogen ice cliffs and mountains around the surface of Triton.
It is a wacky moon. It's got psychedelic coloring on there.
And the only time we've ever visited it up close
was on August twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine, with NASA's
Voyager two spacecraft that flew by Triton and Neptune on
its way out of the Solar System and where it
is now an interstellar space still sending back data.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
This is why I could talk to you for a
very long time, because as you're talking, I'm just sitting
here and I'm like, this is happening right now, in
this specific moment in time. There are waves on Triton
of these oceans, and all I keep thinking to myself is,
and you mean to tell me there's not a squid
squiggling around up there in one of those oceans. We
need more satellitees up there, so what is the I
think I find it fascinating. And we talk a lot
about satellites and whatnot, but just the gi elogy of
the Solar system, which is what you study is is
super interesting. And when people tell me why should I
care about what's happening in space, I say, because if
we understand the properties, the weather, the science, the geology
of our own solar system, of which there are millions
of objects, then we can study those properties to make
life better for humans here on planet Earth. And by
the way, if we can start mining our solar system,
then maybe we won't have to trash our planet. That's
the whole hope. But okay, you're my space coach. Let's
come back to planet Earth for a second. What does
a space coach do? What are you going to teach
me over the next few years. I've got to go
on the vomit comet. Right, you were talking about this earlier,
which is this? I've heard of this. I met reject
when I was Yeah, I was in Colorado when it
was at the Space and Posian thing and Kirby they
were like, have you ever heard of the vomit commet?
I said no, but I want to go on it.
And Tom Cruise apparently was on one when he was
filming the Mission Impossible, one of the Mission Impossible movies.
But they were telling me, it's not just for Hollywood
and special effects that scientists need to understand gravity. Yeah,
and then they lost me because I didn't really understand
why I want to go to space for medical research.
But what are scientists studying for twenty seconds when they
go up in the vomit comet and they're in zero
gravity for twenty seconds?

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, so it's twenty seconds thirteen times, or sorry, thirty
times in a row. You know, researchers are studying all
kinds of things from fluid transfer in microgravity, they're studying
or they're testing new technology. Hey does our widget work
in zero gravity? Because we want to send it to
space eventually. I personally study geologic processes. I study impact cratering,
which is the most common way that geology happens in
our Solar system is rocks hitting each other, and so
I study that process in reduced gravity, not just zero gravity,
but also moon gravity, one sixth the gravity of Earth.
So I've also studied what's called it's a fancy word
called beneficiation, and that.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
That sounds very religious.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Oh, I hear what you're saying. Yeah, this is making
moon dirt more beneficial, beneficiating it from mining to get
the stuff out of it that you want, and so
we were doing an experiment to beneficiate moon dirt. In
lunar gravity, people are setting all kinds of things, from
geology to medical to really testing a lot of different
technology that's destined for space. People are testing solar array
deployment mechanisms, they're testing spacecraft separation techniques, they're testing construction techniques.
In the laboratory, you can control all your variables except one,
and that's gravity. Because you can't just turn off gravity
in your laboratory on Earth, You've got to go fly
to control gravity. And so without access to these airplanes,
I mean sometimes you call it a vomit comment or
zero G or parabolic flight aircraft. Without access to that,
we're really hamstrung in our ability to create technology and
do scientific research that's applicable to space. But then in turn,
as we explore space, as you mentioned, we get more
insight into how to live better on Earth.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Is it safe to say that every person who's been
to space recently has done the zero gravity thing, the
zero gravity.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Flight many people have. The airplane has been in an
extended period of maintenance, at least here in the US.
You can still go to Europe and fly with Novas
Spaces got an Airbus airplane that you can do this
on in France. Not everyone does it, like I don't
think William Shatner flew in parabolic flight before his space flight.
It's not necessary. I would recommend it, though, because when
you are in a flight environment, when you're flying, every
nerve ending in your body is being saturated with stimulation
and it's hard to take it all in. It's hard
to remember the experience if you're trying to remember a
dozen brand new things for the first time. And so
if you've experienced weightlessness before you go to space, space
will feel a bit more familiar and you'll be able
to remember the view better. So as a space coach,
as this outer space lifestyle coach, I help people tailor
their experiences, whether it's visiting New Mexico, whether it's going
on a zero gravity airplane flight, whether it's going in
a stunt plane flight, whether it's going scuba diving, even
going in a higher blow or training like an astronaut
at Philadelphia's Nastar Center with their centrifuge, I help people
accumulate experiences that are relevant for space flight, whether they
go to space or not, because there's a lot of
personal enrichment that can happen for training for space even
if you don't get to go to space, but hopefully
you do What did you me say?

Speaker 1 (14:25):
It was thirty times they do this? What did that mean?

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Oh? Yeah, So in the zero gravity airplane they do
what are called thirty parabolas, So that's up and down
flights of the airplane going up forty five degrees, going
down forty five degrees, and so you're only a wait
list for twenty seconds at a time, but you do
that thirty times in a row on a research flight.
What's the NASTAR facility in the Star Center is the
National Aerospace Training and Research Center and people from all
over the world, a lot from militaries, including our military,
foreign militaries do aerospace training here. So there's a centrifuge
that spins you around. You can experience all the g
forces of a fighter jet or a spacecraft go into
space or reuttering the atmosphere. They've also got a chamber
where they can suck out the air. It's called a
hypoxia chamber, so that you know what you're like on
a lack of oxygen. They can simulate the altitude of
twenty five thousand feet above Earth. And it's cool because
you get to wear this fighter pilot mask, oxygen mask,
and you're breathing pure oxygen, and then they suck out
the air to simulate twenty five thousand feet altitude, and
then you take off your mask and you just get
loopy and silly and frankly kind of stupid as your
brain experiences a lack of oxygen. And you do tests
to see how smart you are. But the point is
to understand your body's effects to regimes similar to high
performance aviation. And that's in Philadelphia and it's not cheap,
but it's also accessible to anyone who wants to save
up and do it.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
I want to do this, so I'll get you a
cheese steak and you can take me to Nassar. All right, coach,
you're gonna have to come back. We've accomplished a lot.
We've laid down some key markers for my journey to
get to space. I appreciate you. I want to have
you back because you've convinced me that the moon is
not a moon, but it's a planet. And I want
to and by the way that Pluto is a planet too,
and I want to have you back on and talk
all about that.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Kirby run you and my space coach.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Remember you can listen to all of the latest Hello
Future episodes on the iHeartMedia app. And have a great
tomorrow Today